Making Pearls

"My new school is horrible!" Clara said as she came into the living room. "The kids all have their own groups of friends and ignore me. My teacher's always in a bad mood and gives ridiculous assignments. I miss my old friends. Why did we have to move here?" She collapsed wearily onto the sofa. Picking up a book that was lying on the coffee table, Clara absentmindedly flipped through the pages. Her dad glanced up, about to say something, when Clara held up the book and pointed to a picture. "Look at this," she said. "It's an oyster. They're not very pretty, are they? But they can make such beautiful pearls."Dad looked more closely at the picture. "That's true. Do you know how oysters make pearls?""Sure. We studied that in school," said Clara. "The oysters have a strong, hard shell outside, but they're soft and fleshy on the inside. Sometimes a grain of sand or something like that gets inside the oyster's shell. The sand irritates the inner membrane and causes the oyster discomfort.""Right," said Dad, "What happens next?""The oyster oozes a liquid onto the grain of sand to ease the irritation," said Clara. "It keeps doing that, layer after layer. Eventually the liquid hardens into a smooth pearl.""A small irritation that created pain and discomfort eventually produced a beautiful object of great value," observed Dad. "We can have the same thing happen in our lives."Clara looked confused. "I'd love to make pearls, Dad, but I'm no oyster!"Dad chuckled. "No, but since we live in a broken world, we have suffering, pain, and other problems creep into our lives--like irritating grains of sand. Yet God can use these hurts and irritations to remind us that Jesus is with us in our suffering and that He promises to restore our broken world one day and make everything new. As He uses the hard things we face in life to help us know Jesus better, He makes us able to produce pearls of another kind." "What kind of pearls?" asked Clara curiously."Pearls of patience, endurance, trust, faith, and hope. They are far more precious than an oyster's pearls, and they make us shine with the beauty of Jesus." -Tanya Ferdinandusz